Floppy Disks on the Brink of Extinction

If you are one of those guys who grew up using those 3.5 inch floppy disks but have already abandoned them for compact discs and DVDs, then you might want to know that the once important storage will soon be a thing of the past as the last of its manufacturers, Sony, will stop its sales in Japan by March next year.

The company introduced the small disk in 1981, thus it would be thirty years old when it bows out next year. The two other variants Hitachi Maxell and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media stopped selling them sometime spring last year.

The capacity of the disk is 1.44 MB. Its sales peaked in 1995 but dropped rapidly by the late 1990s when CD-R and CD-RW, the capacity of which is 650 MB, hit the market.

International sales of the Sony disks have already been stopped last month, except in some areas like India.Japan sales still hit 8.5 million units as of 2008. A pack of 10 pieces sells 570 yen ($6) in Tokyo.